Australians to get three hours of free electricity every day under solar scheme | Hacker News Reader

Australians to get three hours of free electricity every day under solar scheme

abc.net.au

10 pointstoomuchtodo9 comments

This is interesting, but I wonder how it will play out.

I remember reading about the advent of nuclear power, which was supposed to be "too cheap to meter", but it never materialized.

My taks is that "free" always, always correlates with bad behavior. I think people might just heat their pool with resistive electricity. Or air condition their backyard.

A few people wasting electricity in dumb ways won't put a dent in the excess.

People will probably just use it for bitcoin mining or smelting aluminium or some other similar moneymaking activity that is essentially a black hole for electricity.

> I think people might just heat their pool with resistive electricity. Or air condition their backyard.

If the energy surplus is sufficient, I don’t see why this is a huge issue. I doubt a significant population would do it anyway.

Solar analyst Jenny Chase did her yearly "thoughts on solar" update recently and said:

> By 2030 most countries will have spot power prices of zero in sunny hours. This will be passed on to end consumers, to encourage them to shift power demand to sunny periods by electric vehicle and battery charging, preheating, precooling, etc.

https://bsky.app/profile/solarchase.bsky.social/post/3m3mdc5...

So Australia is just ahead of the curve, as it generally is with solar.

I wonder when the US will implement a similar system. For being one of the most wealthy and technologically progressive countries, I'm surprised it isn't further along.

When those with fossil fuel economic interests are disempowered from rent seeking.

When shareholders allow.

Less than 10% of electricity customers will be able to take advantage of offer and they must have a "smart meter"

From a theaustralian.com.au media article ".... The trouble with this thought bubble is that there are some major complications that haven’t been thought through. Just because the wholesale price is often low or negative during the middle of the day doesn’t remove the need for the fixed infrastructure costs – over 40 per cent of the retail bill – to be covered.

If retailers and gentailers (the companies that own generators as well as have retail arms) can’t cover these fixed costs during the “free” three-hour period, then prices at other times of the day will have to be jacked up......

That's one problem

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